
09/06/2025
In many ways, Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is an early example of an Irony, a precursor of a type of literature that was to hold sway over much of the Twentieth Century. The idea that humanity is dual in nature, and that somehow a darker self waits to emerge from within the psychology of an otherwise sane man, is a powerful forerunner of the kind of psychological thriller of later decades, and the phrase ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ has gained such purchase on the imagination that it has entered the language. That fact that Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are one and the same person does not emerge fully until the last chapter, so that we confront the theory of a dual human nature explicitly only after having witnessed Hyde’s crimes and his ultimate eclipsing of Jekyll…
In many ways, Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is an early example of an Irony, a precursor of a type of literature that was to hold sway over much of the Twentieth Century. The idea that humanity is dual in nature, and that somehow a darker self waits t...